Cutwater

also Scissorbill, Shearwater and previously known along the Virginia coast as Storm Gull.

I’d suggest the addition of Penguin Gull.

; )

Do you see the similarity?

My 1917 edition of the Birds of America is a joy for many reasons, but I particularly enjoy it for the local or historical names; so often these names are much more evocative of a bird’s spirit or some fundamental quality that we associate them with.

Peterson sort of dryly describes their call as *barking* or alternately as “kaup, kaup.” To me it sounds like something between a bark and a quack. Members of a colony at rest on the beach will call anxiously to one another as people approach on foot and it sounds for all the world to me like a childhood game of “Marco Polo.”

Listen for that next time!

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